1 . College Undergraduate Poetry (CUP) Competition

Two winners will be chosen for the College Undergraduate Poetry Competition, one receiving the Edna Meudt Memorial Award; the other receiving the Florence Kahn Memorial Award. For each winner, prizes include:

●$500 cash prize.

●Publication of the manuscript (原稿) as a book & marketed through Amazon.com.

●75 free copies of the book.

●Application and Manuscript. Complete the application form and upload your manuscript file online at https://nfsps.submittable.com/submit.The manuscript must be a single document that contains only your title page followed by ten poems. Once you have uploaded the file, you cannot make edits.

●Fees.There is a $10 contest submission fee and no charge to open an account at Submittable.com.

●Submission Period. From the first minute of December 1 to midnight on January 31.

Not following ALL guidelines disqualifies a submission.

●No Identification. There must be no author identification on any page of the manuscript.

●Title Page and Ten Poems. The manuscript will include only the title page and 10 original, unpublished poems.

●Titles. Except for haiku and related Japanese forms, each poem must be titled.

●Judging.Up to 60 entries will be sent to a judge who will remain anonymous (匿名的) until the winners are announced. Manuscripts are judged blind (identified only by machine-generated number). Decisions are final.

●Notification of Winners. Winners will be announced in the April issue of Strophes, available at nfsps.com.

●Contact Information. If there is any change in your contact information, please contact Jessica at jessica.NFSPS@gmail.com.

4 . A photo of a Kentucky coal miner with his family at a college basketball game is going viral (疯狂传播). The photo shows Michael McGuire and his son sitting in the stands at the University of Kentucky Wildcats game on Saturday. McGuire is still wearing his work uniform and his face and arms are covered in black coal dust, which makes him different from others.

Kentucky’s head coach John Calipari put the picture online and expressed admiration for McGuire’s hard work and love for his son.

“My family’s American dream started in a Clarksburg, WV coal mine, so this picture hits home, ” Calipari wrote. “From what I’ve been told, after his shift, he raced to be with his son and watch our team. I don’t know who this is, but I have tickets for him and his family at Rupp to be treated as VIPs!”

McGuire had not yet been identified at that point, but Kentucky fans quickly found him and connected the coach with the family.

MeGuire’s wife, Mollie, replied on social media with a photo she had taken at the game. She wrote: “My amazing husband started his day at 4:45 am that morning and worked all day and then drove straight to the arena to meet us and enjoy the game with our son! We are truly blessed with such an amazing man! We love our coal miner. ”

McGuire told local station WKYT that he didn’t want to miss his son Easton’s first basketball experience. He said Easton had a good time.

Coach Calipari said he hopes McGuire will be a lesson for his players. “I talked to my guys about it. It’s just a great lesson, and I showed them the picture yesterday of Michael and his son. I talked about hard, tiring work that’s honorable work, adding that he made time for his son, even when he knew he couldn’t shower. It didn’t matter what he looked like. He just wanted to be with his son,” Calipari said.

5 . When the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), the world’s governing body for soccer, claimed that the 2022 World Cup in Qatar would be “a fully carbon-neutral (碳中和) event”, it attracted worldwide laughter from the environmentalists.

World Cup hosts often maintain that stadiums built for the event will remain in constant use after its conclusion—a claim that allows them to spread their carbon footprint over many years. But it’s hard to believe the claim. After all, Qatari soccer culture is still undeveloped. Even soccer- mad countries such as Russia, Brazil and South Africa-hosts of the previous three men’s World Cups-have been left with a group of relatively useless stadiums.

In addition to the carbon cost of the stadiums, Qatar expects to see 1, 300 daily flights to and from the country during the World Cup. But that’s not the only source of airplane emissions. The grass seeds to give rise to the tournament’s green pitches (球场) have been flown in from North America on climate-controlled planes. And these fields won’t water themselves. The groundskeepers who maintain the eight stadium pitches, as well as the 136 practice fields, douse each field with 10, 000 liters of water every day in the winter. In the summer the pitches require a surprising amount of 50, 000 liters each.

Soccer isn’t alone in this. Three recent Olympics-Tokyo 2020, Rio de Janeiro 2016 and Sochi 2014-earned some of the worst environmental sustainability scores. All this raises an important question: Is it even possible to stage a carbon-neutral sports mega event? The ever- expanding size of these events likely puts net-zero emissions out of reach. One recent study found that between 1964 and 2018, the soccer World Cup and the Olympics were about 60 times as large in terms of the number of sports, athletes, journalists, spectators, marketing and costs involved.

The large sports events, as they are currently organized, are unsustainable. Since FIFA and the International Olympic Committee made more environmental claims back in the 1990s, their events have only become bigger, and their effects have only become more severe.

6 . Villains love a monologue

Every superhero needs a good (or should we say bad) supervillain(超级大反派). Invent a supervillain. In pictures and/ or words, describing their final punishment. Who are they? What’s their plan? Even if your character tends to be long-winded, keep your writing to 100 words or fewer.

Competition rules:

1. Your competition entry must be your very own original work; ideas and words should not be copied.

2.Be sure to include your name, age, and full address on your entry.

3.Only one entry per person, please.

4.If you want your work returned, enclose (随信附上） a self-addressed,stamped envelope.

5.All entries must be signed by a parent or legal guardian, saying that this is your own work and giving permission to publish. For more information about our compliance with(遵守). Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act,visit our page at cricketmedia.com/privacy.

6.Your entry must be received by July 31,2021. We will publish winning entries in the August 2021 issue of Muse.

7.Send entries to Muse Contest,70E.Lake St,Suite 800,Chicago,IL 60601 or by email to muse@cricketmedia.com. If entering a digital photo,please send it at 300dpi.

8 . Kazunori Takishima has been traveling the world to support Japan at every Olympic Games for the past 15 years, so he intended to see the event in his home city of Tokyo. But when a ban on audience was announced, that dream was over.

He had spent nearly $40,000 on 197 tickets for him and his friends to see as many events as possible during Tokyo 2020, which started on July 23.

“It took an unbelievable amount of time, effort, and passion,” Takishima told CNN. “But I was so passionate about the Olympics that even though it was very difficult and challenging, I enjoyed the process of buying the tickets.”

The 45-year-old businessman worked out that if he watched all the events he had booked, he would have broken the Guinness World Record for attendance at Olympic events. He got a refund (退款) on the tickets he had purchased.

Takishima’s love for the Olympics started in 2005 when he saw a figure skating competition for the first time and immediately bought tickets for the 2006 Torino Olympics in Italy. He was infatuated. It inspired him so much that he has been going to the Olympics ever since.

But this year, only members of the media and the selected people were allowed to watch the events. The decision by Olympic officials to ban audience was designed to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

“And it’s the athletes that will suffer the most from the lack of support in the stands,” Takishima said.

“It’s a great loss when your family can’t come,” Takishima said. “So I hope everyone will at least cheer for them in front of the TV.”

Despite his disappointment, he said the experience wouldn’t stop him from being an Olympic superfan. “I will continue to visit and support the Olympics until the day I die,” Takishima said. “While I’m still able to move, I plan to see all the Games from the opening to the closing ceremonies.”

9 . The Tour de France is a bike race, which lasts over three weeks and covers 3,351 kilometers. Held in France in July, it is really tough and bikers have to race up and down mountains, on winding, dangerous roads. Every day, he riders finish a different part of the race, called a "stage". Every stage can have a different winner, and each lay, the total time is added up. The person who is leading wears a yellow shirt to show that they are winners.

But there are no women in the Tour de France. For years, women have been trying to change that. From 1984 to 2009, there was a women's Tour de France, run under different names by different organizations. But in 2009, it ended completely.

The Tour de France is organized by Amaury Sport Organization (ASO). In 2014, ASO began holding a race for women called La Course. But La Course is not a long, challenging race.

To make people more aware that a women's Tour de France is necessary, a French cycling club has taken on an unusual project called "J-1". As part of J-1 , since 2015 , a group of women has been riding the exact same come as the men' s Tour de France，just one day earlier.

Women look part in the J-1 project again in 2021. But next year, they won't have to. That's because ASO has announced that in July of 2022, they will be holding the Tour de France Femmes.

The Tour de France Femmes will be an eight-day race with many stages which will start when the men's Tour de France is finished. Christian Prudhomme, the organizer, says this time they are hoping to set the race up in a way that it will make money, allowing the event to continue.

10 . Standing at the finish line, 70-year-old Bob Long spent a while reflecting on the achievement he’d just made. Behind him was the wild, endless Mongolian grassland extending into the distance. This American had just become the oldest person ever to complete and win the Mongol Derby, the world’s longest horse race.

Long, a rider all his life, entered the race after being inspired by All the Wild Horses, a movie based on the grueling event.

Fearing that he wouldn’t be able to complete it, he set about preparing his mind and body for this “hardest, toughest, most demanding thing you can do on a horse”, an annual 1,000-kilometer race that was recognized as the world’s longest horse race by The Guinness Book of Records in 2011.

Although Long had been riding horses for many years, the hardship and uncertainty of the task pushed him to his limit and forced him to depend entirely on his own will. The race organizers had provided an extensive support network to keep an eye on the participants from afar. Despite that, the physical strain of riding such a long distance made simple things like squatting (蹲) down at the end of the day almost impossible.

Along the vast race course there were unpredictable circumstances beyond Long’s control, however well prepared he’d been. Weather was one of them, which could switch from heavy rain to burning sun unexpectedly.

Above all else, the biggest obstacle was the state of mind. Without a living soul in sight, Long was desperate for interaction, guidance, and comfort. This feeling of loneliness accounted for his hope that one of his fellow competitors would catch up.

Regardless of the hardship, Long felt a sort of spiritual adventure while traveling through the wilderness. He was provided with some memorable moments while connecting with nature. Still holding the passion for riding, Long never dismisses the idea of competing in another Mongol Derby.